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This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing
Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a
common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the
stranger, to any that has not himself attained to see. There were
not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision
compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this
mingling with the Supreme must- if he only remember- carry its
image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing within
him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no
passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved;
reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare
the word, the very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in
perfect stillness attained isolation; all the being calmed, he
turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to
himself; utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no
longer to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty;
he has overpassed even the choir of the virtues; he is like one
who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple
images behind him- though these become once more first objects of
regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not
with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view
of which all the rest is but of secondary concern.
There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown;
it was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a
renunciation, a reach towards contact and at the same time a
repose, a meditation towards adjustment. This is the only seeing
of what lies within the holies: to look otherwise is to fail.
Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers
how the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the
sign may enter the holy place and make real the vision of the
inaccessible.
Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence
of that invisible; they will know their source and Principle
since by principle they see principle and are linked with it, by
like they have contact with like and so they grasp all of the
divine that lies within the scope of mind. Until the seeing comes
they are still craving something, that which only the vision can
give; this Term, attained only by those that have overpassed all,
is the All-Transcending.
It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the
lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to
utter nothing, never. When the soul begins again to mount, it
comes not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached,
it is not in nothingness but in itself; self-gathered it is no
longer in the order of being; it is in the Supreme.
There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man
outgrows Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being.
The self thus lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if
from that heightened self we pass still higher- image to
archetype- we have won the Term of all our journeying. Fallen
back again, we awaken the virtue within until we know ourselves
all order once more; once more we are lightened of the burden and
move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and through the
Wisdom in That to the Supreme.
This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among
men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking
no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to
solitary.
THE END
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